on 3/17/03 11:12 AM, Mark Saleski at marks@foliage.com wrote:

now this is interesting. don't really know how it would work out.

with books i sort of mistrust critcs not so much because i think they 'know it all' but because many times it seems like they've read so much that they're only interested in...uh....complexity.

a lot of dilletante armchair critics are like this, as if complexity or "innovation" (an overused word largely used to describe the emperor's latest seasonal wardrobe). really good critics -- and there are a bunch out there -- tend to look at an artist on his or her own merits. And they have the good taste to stay away from writing about those who they feel are without merit.

for me, the best reviews are ones that show the review to be in love with music. maybe the best example of this (from the past) is Lester Bangs. gees, i just loved his reviews when i was a kid. i didn't always know where he was going with something...but it was a fun ride. and really, i just want to know what the damned recording sounds like....not whether so and so is a 'master'.

all the old CREEM crew were great like that. they seemed to really want to share the stuff they loved, instead of denigrating you for not knowing about it. it made punk rock really inviting for a generation of us. it made you spend your paper route money on slits records.

the reviews i like the least are the snotty ones...where you just know that the reviews hates, say Dave Douglas, and always has. i mean, what's the point?

Me too. Of course, there are reliable reports that Dave can be a tad prickly when he believes a critic has called him anything less than a savior. To be fair, most -- NOT all, but most -- critics who write for reputable music publications with real editors don't get to play "I the jury" games in their reviews. It's easier to get away with that crap in a mag like the ATLANTIC MONTHLY, where the editor doesn't really know about the music and thew people who make it. A good music magazine editor is a human checks and balances sytem against that stuff. If anyone on the list ever wrote for PULSE, they'll remember Marc Weidenbaum as one of the most fairminded editors ever, not just toward his writers, but also how they said what they said in their reviews. All the guys I knew who wrote for PULSE (I did for a short while) were addicted to music and totally in love with it. Tape trading mavens who would get drunk and argue about whether the Replacements were still great or not. I imagine the MOJO crowd is like that. I've noticed those are the guys who either tried doing music but found themselves unsuited to it for whatever reason, or they're guys who booked or promoted shows at some point, or maybe managed bands, or something like that. They cut slack to artists, because they know that just because the studio is booked doesn't mean the music that happens that day is going to represent the best of the people playing it, and, win or lose, they're stuck with that day's work. Again, it's been my good fortune to have about 95% of my reviews written by critics like this. But the music critic who has never had to do anything to get music made -- has never promoted a show, produced a band's demo, played in a garage band, whatever -- and then makes enormous pronouncements about any artist's failure to live up to some mysterious criterion that only he (the critic) is allowed to decide... I can only hope the shit he writes comes to life and French kisses him. -- skip h http://www.skipheller.com